Rwandan-backed M23 rebels are seizing control of areas within the DRC. This will only escalate unless western governments act. A s if this world needs more bloodshed, here comes another major war knocking on the door of the crumbling international order.
It also exposes the complacency of western governments, who many Congolese accuse of paving the way for this crisis. The rebellion, known as the M23 , has been snowballing since In recent months, M23 seized swathes of territory as it encircled Goma, a city nestled below a group of volcanoes facing the Rwandan border. A darling of many western countries, Kagame rose to power in the wake of the genocide, against whose perpetrators he fought as a rebel commander.
He has long argued his interventions in DRC are driven by his mission to safeguard his ethnic Tutsi group, which has at times been the butt of pogroms and political persecution in eastern Congo and from which M23 draws its leadership. Yet the series of wars involving Rwanda and the Congolese state since Kagame took power have been about much more than this.
Rwanda-backed rebels, who controlled much of eastern DRC in the late s, extracted massive amounts of mineral wealth. Formed in as the latest iteration of those rebellions, the M23 briefly took Goma before they were defeated the following year. Throughout the cycle of wars, western officials defended Rwanda in closed diplomatic circles , routinely playing down evidence of Rwandan backing for these rebellions. His western friends held up Rwanda as a feelgood story of post-genocidal reconstruction.
But by this time, M23 soldiers had begun to re-establish a camp near one of the volcanoes and were looking for outside support again. The rebellion escalated in after a series of stalled talks between M23 representatives and the Congolese government concerning the possible reintegration of some M23 members into state institutions. Rwanda had by then become an even more prized ally for the west.
